LookAtVietnam – Education experts believe the State has not invested heavily enough in remote learning.

According to Dr Professor Lam Quang Thiep, former director of the Higher Education Department under the Ministry of Education and Training, other regional countries like Thailand, China and Malaysia, have been effectively using distance education in their plans to popularise higher education.

Meanwhile, Thiep says Vietnam still does not pay necessary attention to this kind of education. He says his conclusion can be proved by the fact that although the project on distance education development for 2005-2010 has been approved by the Prime Minister, it has not yet been implemented.

Ta Thi Hong Hanh, MA, from the HCM City Open University, shared the same views she said open learning is growing in value across the world and yet was still not receiving enough support here in Vietnam.

In fact, Vietnam has established two training centres of this kind - the Hanoi Open University and the HCM City Semi-state owned University. However, the state has not made any considerable investment in the two universities since they were established 16 years ago.

To date, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) is still granting ‘enrolment quotas’ to the two universities as it does with other universities. However, the two universities are operating under the mode of ‘financial self-control’ which means they do not receive money from state budgets.

In short, the State has set up the universities then left them alone.

Dr Nguyen Hong Son from MOET’s Continuing Education Department admits the State has not had any policy on investment in this kind of education, though there are further 17 universities nationwide which can provide distance education.

Thiep says that in Vietnam, distance education in particular and university education in general have been developed with no overall strategy. As a result, the two open universities have become “closed” universities. Meanwhile, other universities have become ‘open’ having seen opportunities open to them.

If Vietnam really thinks that it needs to develop distance education, experts say, it has much work to do. This includes: specific curriculums for distance learners and boosting the quality of lecturers.

Above all, Vietnam needs to announce a new set of standards to assess distance education establishments.

VietNamNet/VnMedia